Life of St. Francis of Assisi
were in close agreement, as also with the Humiliants. All these names
involuntarily suggest that by which St. Francis afterward called his
Order. The analogy between the inspiration of Peter Waldo and that of
St. Francis was so close that one might be tempted to believe the latter
a sort of imitation of the former. It would be a mistake: the same
causes produced in all quarters the same effects; ideas of reform, of a
return to gospel poverty, were in the air, and this helps us to
understand how it was that before many years the Franciscan preaching
reverberated through the entire world. If at the outset the careers of
these two men were alike, their later lives were very different. Waldo,
driven into heresy almost in spite of himself, was obliged to accept the
consequences of the premises which he himself had laid down;[16] while
Francis, remaining the obedient son of the Church, bent all his efforts
to develop the inner life in himself and his disciples. It is indeed
most likely that through his father Francis had become acquainted with
the movement of the _Poor Men of Lyons_. Hence his oft-repeated counsels
to his friars of the duty of submission to the clergy. When he went to
seek the approbation of Innocent III., it is evident that the prelates
with whom he had relations warned him, by the very example of Waldo, of
the dangers inherent in his own movement.[17]
The latter had gone to Rome in 1179, accompanied by a few followers, to
ask at the same time the approbation of their translation of the
Scriptures into the vulgar tongue and the permission to preach. They
were granted both requests on condition of gaining for their preaching
the authorization of their local clergy. Walter Map ([Cross] 1210), who was
charged with their examination, was constrained, while ridiculing their
simplicity, to admire their poverty and zeal for the apostolic life.[18]
Two or three years later they met a very different reception at Rome,
and in 1184 they were anathematized by the Council of Verona. From that
day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church. They
multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Franciscans.
By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from
Hungary to Spain; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the
latter country. Other countries were at first satisfied with treating
them as excommunicated persons.
Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossibility of holding
their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year,
and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain
unity of doctrine, the Waldenses rapidly underwent a change according to
their environment; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves
good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the
hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments.[19] Hence that multiplicity
of differing and even hostile branches which seemed to develop almost
hourly.
A common persecution brought them nearer to the Cathari and favored the
fusion of their ideas. Their activity was inconceivable. Under pretext
of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road, simple and
insinuating. The methods of travel of that day were peculiarly favorable
to the diffusion of ideas. While retailing news to those whose
hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the
Church and the reforms that were needed. Such conversations were a means
of apostleship much more efficacious than those of the present day, the
book and the newspaper; there is nothing like the _viva vox_[20] for
spreading thought.
Many vile stories have been told of the Waldenses; calumny is far too
facile a weapon not to tempt an adversary at bay. Thus they have been
charged with the same indecent promiscuities of which the early
Christians were accused. In reality their true strength was in their
virtues, which strongly contrasted with the vices of the clergy.
The most powerful and determined enemies of the Church were the Cathari.
Sincere, audacious, often learned and keen in argument, having among
them some choice spirits and men of great intellectual powers, they were
pre-eminently the heretics of the thirteenth century. Their revolt did
not bear upon points of detail and questions of discipline, like that of
the early Waldenses; it had a definite doctrinal basis, taking issue
with the whole body of Catholic dogma. But, although this heresy
flourished in Italy and under the very eyes of St. Francis, there is
need only to indicate it briefly. His work may have received many
infiltrations from the Waldensian movement, but Catharism was wholly
foreign to it.
This is naturally explained by the fact that St. Francis never consented
to occupy himself with questions of doctrine. For him faith was not of
the intellectual but the moral domain; it is the consecration of the
heart. Time spent in dogmatizing appeared to him time lost.
An incident in the life of Brother Egidio well brings out the slight
esteem in which theology was held by the early Brothers Minor. One day,
in the presence of St. Bonaventura, he cried, perhaps not without a
touch of irony, "Alas! what shall we ignorant and simple ones do to
merit the favor of God?" "My brother," replied the famous divine, "you
know very well that it suffices to love the Lord." "Are you very sure of
that?" replied Egidio; "do you believe that a simple woman might please
Him as well as a master in theology?" Upon the affirmative response of
his interlocutor, he ran out into the street and calling to a beggar
woman with all his might, "Poor old creature," he exclaimed, "rejoice,
for if you love God, you may have a higher place in the kingdom of
heaven than Brother Bonaventura!"[21]
The Cathari, then, had no direct influence upon St. Francis,[22] but
nothing could better prove the disturbance of thought at this epoch
than that resurrection of Manicheism. To what a depth of lassitude and
folly must religious Italy have fallen for this mixture of Buddhism,
Mazdeism, and gnosticism to have taken such hold upon it! The Catharist
doctrine rested upon the antagonism of two principles, one bad, the
other good. The first had created matter; the second, the soul, which,
for generation after generation passes from one body to another until it
achieves salvation. Matter is the cause and the seat of evil; all
contact with it constitutes a blemish,[23] consequently the Cathari
renounced marriage and property and advocated suicide. All this was
mixed up with most complicated cosmogonical myths.
Their adherents were divided into two classes--the pure or perfect, and
the believers, who were proselytes in the second degree, and whose
obligations were very simple. The adepts, properly so called, were
initiated by the ceremony of the _consolamentum_ or imposition of hands,
which induced the descent upon them of the Consoling Spirit. Among them
were enthusiasts who after this ceremony placed themselves in
_endura_--that is to say, they starved themselves to death in order not
to descend from this state of grace.
In Languedoc, where this sect went by the name of Albigenses, they had
an organization which embraced all Central Europe, and everywhere
supported flourishing schools attended by the children of the nobles. In
Italy they were hardly less powerful; Concorrezo, near Monza in
Lombardy, and Bagnolo, gave their names to two congregations slightly
different from those in Languedoc.[24]
But it was especially from Milan[25] that they spread abroad over all
the Peninsula, making proselytes even in the most remote districts of
Calabria. The state of anarchy prevailing in the country was very
favorable to them. The papacy was too much occupied in baffling the
spasmodic efforts of the Hohenstaufen, to put the necessary perseverance
and system into its struggles against heresy. Thus the new ideas were
preached under the very shadow of the Lateran; in 1209, Otho IV., coming
to Rome to be crowned, found there a school in which Manicheism was
publicly taught.[26]
With all his energy Innocent III. had not been able to check this evil
in the States of the Church. The case of Viterbo tells much of the
difficulty of repressing it; in March, 1199, the pope wrote to the
clergy and people of this town to recall to their minds, and at the same
time to increase, the penalties pronounced against heresy. For all that,
the Patarini had the majority in 1205, and succeeded in naming one of
themselves consul.[27]
The wrath of the pontiff at this event was unbounded; he fulminated a
bull menacing the city with fire and sword, and commanding the
neighboring towns to throw themselves upon her if within a fortnight she
had not given satisfaction.[28] It was all in vain: the Patarini were
dealt with only as a matter of form; it needed the presence of the pope
himself to assure the execution of his orders and obtain the demolition
of the houses of the heretics and their abettors (autumn of 1207).[29]
But stifled at one point the revolt burst out at a hundred others; at
this moment it was triumphant on all sides; at Ferrara, Verona, Rimini,
Florence, Prato, Faenza, Treviso, Piacenza. The clergy were expelled
from this last town, which remained more than three years without a
priest.[30]
Viterbo is twenty leagues from Assisi, Orvieto only ten, and
disturbances in this town were equally grave. A noble Roman, Pietro
Parentio, the deputy of the Holy See in this place, endeavored to
exterminate the Patarini. He was assassinated.[31]
But Francis needed not to go even so far as Orvieto to become acquainted
with heretics. In Assisi the same things were going on as in the
neighboring cities. In 1203 this town had elected for podesta a heretic
named Giraldo di Gilberto, and in spite of warnings from Rome had
persisted in keeping him at the head of affairs until the expiration of
his term of office (1204). Innocent III., who had not yet been obliged
to use vigor with Viterbo, resorted to persuasion and despatched to
Umbria the Cardinal Leo di Santa Croce, who will appear more than once
in this history.[32] The successor of Giraldo and fifty of the principal
citizens made the _amende honorable_ and swore fidelity to the Church.
It is easy to perceive in what a state of ferment Italy was during these
early years of the thirteenth century. The moral discredit of the clergy
must have been deep indeed for souls to have turned toward Manicheism
with such ardor.
Italy may well be grateful to St. Francis; it was as much infected with
Catharism as Languedoc, and it was he who wrought its purification. He
did not pause to demonstrate by syllogisms or theological theses the
vanity of the Catharist doctrines; but soaring as on wings to the
religious life, he suddenly made a new ideal to shine out before the
eyes of his contemporaries, an ideal before which all these fantastic
sects vanished as birds of the night take flight at the first rays of
the sun.
A great part of St. Francis's power came to him thus through his
systematic avoidance of polemics. The latter is always more or less a
form of spiritual pride; it only deepens the chasm which it undertakes
to fill up. Truth needs not to be proved; it is its own witness.
The only weapon which he would use against the wicked was the holiness
of a life so full of love as to enlighten and revive those about him,
and compel them to love.[33] The disappearance of Catharism in Italy,
without an upheaval, and above all without the Inquisition, is thus an
indirect result of the Franciscan movement, and not the least important
among them.[34]
At the voice of the Umbrian reformer Italy roused herself, recovered her
good sense and fine temper; she cast out those doctrines of pessimism